Dr. Jamie Zibulsky

Hello...

My interest in the field of reading development, and my decision to become a school psychologist, was propelled by a photograph that hung in my bedroom throughout college. The moment captured in this picture, of my father sitting on the beach and reading intently—and me at 18-months perched in the chair next to him, studying my own picture book with fervent interest, is the perfect illustration of the type of early exposure to books that jumpstarted my lifelong love of reading. As an early reader who began reading independently during kindergarten, I received a great deal of attention and praise from the adults in my life for my love of books. These behaviors—of opening a book, talking about stories, and learning to sound out words—was been reinforced even from the time I was still wearing diapers. Reading side-by-side with my parents, on the beach or on the couch, was a frequent and magical part of my childhood.

Although I began reading to spend time with and receive attention from my parents, I began to derive my own intrinsic pleasure from reading as I became a more sophisticated reader. In elementary school, when I had a disagreement with my friends or bickered with my sister, diving into a book was the best way for me to make myself feel better. I remembers devouring playful books by authors like Gordon Korman (who wrote the Bruno and Boots series) and Ann M. Martin (who wrote The Baby-sitter’s Club series), while also adoring more serious books by Patricia MacLachlan, Natalie Babbit, and Katherine Paterson. For someone who catches the reading bug, books become friends in times of joy and in times of annoyance. To this day, one of the best ways that I know how to cope with sadness or frustration is to pick up a familiar book and visit with characters I adore. And in good times, selecting books to bring to the beach or on a vacation is one of the great pleasures of my life. My goal in writing this book was to help your family enjoy reading as much as I have, because I know that no one becomes a reader alone.

Jamie’s Professional Experiences…

I am a school psychologist by training, and my interest in the area of reading research developed over time, as I was frequently asked to evaluate older elementary school children and adolescents for special educational services or to provide these students with social skills or anger management training. Almost always, when I looked through their cumulative records, I would see that all through elementary school, often starting in kindergarten, their teachers had warned that they were struggling as readers. But because help was not given soon enough, these children began to have incredible difficulty making sense of the information that was presented throughout each and every school day—because reading is an essential part of math, science, and social studies learning, too—and they began to misbehave instead of trying to learn. For me, once I knew of their reading difficulties, their frustration seemed quite understandable.

This observation, that so many children who needed help in reading at an early age were not getting it, is what inspired me to become a professor. I direct the MA/Certification program in School Psychology at Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) in Teaneck, New Jersey, and teach in that program as well as our doctoral programs. By training the next generation of educators, I hope to help change the school system so that these students get help sooner. I also continue to work with children and parents at FDU’s Center for Psychological Services. My work with families has shown me that teaching parents to serve as their children’s teachers and therapists is tremendously powerful, because parents have the opportunity to help children learn and practice new skills many times every day.